Congratulations in print again Paul. (Garden Rail 182 October 2009) A nice article and a good excuse for lots of photographs of the good old Stainz, I think you should modify some of yours so that you can show the variations and modifications made over time.

Thanks Peter

I'd forgotten about the article, I wrote it a few months back.....

I must admit, most of the modifications I have made to date have taken the form of weathering and the additon of weight so they can haul heavier trains.

The most "radical" alteration so far is to wire pairs up so that power pick up is optimum and working as a pair they can haul long trains such as this............

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nERgZT72vKU

Spot on Peter - twelve points of pick up instead of six

I also have three Massoth power buffers in my spares box, but I have never got round to fitting any

I have found that by removing the traction tyre from a couple of Stainz, the pick up does improve - to the level where I can run one at speed step one over a point.
To compensate for the removal of the tyre, I added more lead weight (up to 2.2 kilos).

Let me know how you get on guys! I had pick up problems on even a clean indoor track with two axlw loco's, so I,ve fitted my KOF, E1 and Stainz with power buffers - so far no problems even outdoors on leaves etc.

Strangely enough my newly acquired two axle tram doesn't seem to suffer even without a buffer, so perhaps it's loco specific and that has a traction tyre!